Beauty and the Professor (A Modern Fairy Tale Duet 1)

“I’m good. Take your time.”

She flashed him a smile as she grabbed her purse. The door closed behind her.

Finally Blake allowed his gaze to find the center of the room. An accordion base and plastic rails. Thin white sheets. A drip from a clear bag to his vein, keeping him alive. Joe hadn’t wanted that. Blake had suggested that to Sherry when he’d visited her then. He thought she would have slapped him then if he hadn’t been wrapped three times around with bandages. So here they were.

He strolled to the side of the bed and sat down. Sherry would give him enough time. She may not always agree with what they wanted, but she understood them. Soldiers. Survivors. She was both as well.

“Hey, man.” His voice cracked. He cleared his throat. “It’s me. Blake.”

His chest felt tight. This was harder than he thought. Which was saying something, because he’d thought it would be pretty fucking hard.

The machinery beeped in the background. Unobtrusive, he supposed. He wondered if Joe could really hear anything. He wondered if the beeping was driving him insane.

Joe’s face was slimmer and clean-shaven. It bore none of the bruises and marks that Blake remembered. No scars. Unlike Blake, his wounds were all inside. Irony had painted their lives with broad, cruel strokes.

Blake wasn’t much older, but he’d already gone through a couple tours. He was the corporal, team leader, and occasional mentor to the new kid. Joe had looked up to him like he was Indiana Jones, and without fully realizing it, Blake had eaten that shit up.

Then they’d gotten blown apart. Well, Blake’s face had gotten blown up mostly. He’d woken in a dank, dark prison, finding both himself and Joe tied down like animals.

Only then, the craziest fucking thing happened. Blake was the team leader. He knew way more valuable shit. He should have taken the brunt of the interrogation. He should have been the one tortured. Except he was out of his mind with pain from the burns, delirious and incoherent. So they’d focused all their attention on Joe. Young, guileless Joe.

They were rescued in two weeks. Just a blip on the radar. Two weeks, fourteen days, 336 hours of torture. On the official forms, it said there were two survivors. But only Blake had woken up, his face so ruined that his fiancée had walked out at the first sight of him. Meanwhile, Sherry had stayed by Joe’s side all this time. She’d never give up, and Joe would never wake up, so yeah. Irony was a bitch.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

He swallowed. “I met someone. Her name’s Erin. It’s pretty serious. She makes me…well, she makes me want to be better. That probably sounds strange, because I know I told you all about Melinda back then.”

Deep breath. It got easier, he was finding, if he kept going. Maybe there was a lesson in that. Just keep moving forward.

“It didn’t work out. She left me, really. But she was right about one thing. We couldn’t have gone back to the way things were.” He hadn’t fully understood that at first. Not even when she hadn’t come to pick him up from the hospital after he was released. Instead she’d been waiting at the door to his house. He’d been so overwhelmed and lonely after months in the damn hospital bed. He’d pulled her into his arms. She hadn’t hugged him back.

Then he’d noticed the luggage.

“I know I’m an ass for even talking to you about this. I get to walk around and live my life. A different one. I wish I could give that to you, man. I wished for so long that I could trade places with you.” But he couldn’t, and so for a while he’d stopped living his own life.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Sherry looks great, by the way. Really…” Steadfast. Loyal. Kind. And it was fucking weird feeling any amount of envy for a man in a coma. “Really lovely. Just like you said.”

Through the window, he could see gray clouds weighing down over the city. It would rain later.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to come back. I was being a dumbass, but you’ve probably figured that out by now. I’m going to try and be better. Check in on Sherry and the kiddo more often. Everything’s okay out here, so you…you don’t have to worry. Just focus on getting better.”

He reached out and squeezed Joe’s hand before he left. Sherry stood outside the room, chatting with the nurses. He hugged her goodbye and promised to visit in a week.

It had been a type of lie, what he’d said to Joe. Just focus on getting better. The odds were he would never get better. The doctors had said as much. Sherry had refused to believe that. And maybe Blake didn’t quite believe it either. As he walked into the overcast day, he felt a little bit lighter.

Chapte

r Eleven

Erin

Erin had always known she’d go to graduate school, even in high school, even though no one in her family had gone to college at all. She wanted to work in the political sphere, behind the scenes. And though she was prepared to do grunt work at the bottom, she aimed higher. Her master’s degree would be a statement of intent, telling the world—and herself—that she was damn serious.

She returned to her apartment in the prime hours of morning. The tiny kitchen was silent and cheery, sun streaming through the windows. It was starting to look foreign to her. She’d spent the past few nights at Blake’s house.

A hot shower washed away any trace of Blake’s lovemaking from her body. She moved quietly so as not to wake her roommate, granting Courtney a few extra minutes of sleep. Soon enough she could wait no longer.